Inside: a redacted extract from the Lighthouse List, an independent database tracking 336 retirement villages and land lease communities across Brisbane and Southeast Queensland, across 75+ data points, refreshed monthly.
Village or Land Lease? How to Choose in Brisbane
Registered Property Valuer · Licensed Buyer's Agent · 25 years in Brisbane property
What each option really costs, how the contracts differ and how to tell which one fits your situation. A free 16-page guide from an independent Brisbane adviser with no ties to any village or operator.
The family home has quietly become more work than it gives back. Somebody has opened fourteen browser tabs, all written by the people doing the selling, and started wondering how anyone compares these places fairly. If that sounds familiar, you are in the right place.
Which of these sounds like you?
The explorer
The house has become more than you want to manage. There is no rush and no crisis, but you want to understand your options properly, with a clear written plan, before anyone shows you a display home.
The proactive planner
You like deciding well ahead of need. You want a proper framework, real information and straight answers to hard questions about contracts most Australians have never met before.
The urgent transition
A change in health, or a home that no longer suits everyday life, has brought the decision forward. Often the adult children are helping to lead the process around busy lives of their own. You want plain answers and steady momentum.
The three money moments that decide the outcome
A retirement village and a land lease community look almost identical in a brochure. Financially and legally, they are very different, and the differences show up years later, usually at the point of leaving. The guide walks through the three moments where the money actually moves:
Going in. An entry contribution in a village. A home purchase in a land lease community. Similar-looking sums on entirely different legal footings, under two different Acts of Parliament.
Living there. A general services charge in a village. A weekly site fee in a land lease community. The starting number matters less than how it moves over twenty years.
Leaving. Deferred management fees, reinstatement and capital gain clauses on one side. A home you own and sell on the other. In the worked example on page 7 of the guide, $317,500 comes out at exit before the resident or her estate receives anything. The difference between contract options at the same village can run to six figures.
Also inside the guide
- A side-by-side comparison of both models on a single page
- A worked deferred management fee example in real dollars
- A redacted extract from the Lighthouse List, showing how communities actually compare
- Two printable tour checklists: ten questions for a village inspection, eight for a land lease community
A redacted extract from the Lighthouse List. In this sample alone, exit fee caps range from 30% reached at year twelve to 98% reached at year 28. This is why the contract matters more than the brochure.
Meet your independent adviser
Sam Price. 25 years in Brisbane property as a Registered Property Valuer and Licensed Buyer's Agent. Hazel & Fred is named after his grandparents.
"Nobody wakes up wanting a retirement village. The real question people ask is what do we do about the house."
I'm Sam Price. I have spent 25 years in Brisbane property as a Registered Property Valuer and Licensed Buyer's Agent, helping hundreds of families buy, sell and value homes across Brisbane and Southeast Queensland.
My own family faced these decisions, and helping them showed me how hard it is to find advice from someone without a stake in the answer. That is why Hazel & Fred exists, and it is why this guide is free. It is named after my grandparents and I run it to their standard.
Hazel & Fred is a fixed-fee, independent advisory service. I take no commissions from villages or operators, no referral payments and no kickbacks from anyone. You, the client, pay the fee. That is the entire business model, and it is what allows every page of the guide to be straight with you.
Who I can't help
If you want someone to steer you toward a particular village, I am not the right fit. Operators cannot pay me and I do not take sides. And if the right answer for you turns out to be staying put with some help at home, or a smaller home in ordinary housing, I will tell you so. I work with people who want the decision understood properly before it is made.
Get the data before you visit a display home
The sales office will show you the brochure. This guide shows you the three moments where the money moves, the questions confident buyers ask and the clauses worth reading twice, so you walk into the first inspection with the right questions rather than a good feeling.
Hazel & Fred · Brisbane · Independent retirement living and downsizing guidance · V310726